So much water, so many trees

The last few days have been really busy, if sitting down for most of the time, but having to get up really early or getting to bed late at night after travelling the whole day, counts.

The ferry was a beautiful trip, gliding along (with hardly a swell) between the mainland and lots and lots of islands.  The ferry is only 12 months old, and was purpose built, so it was comfortable and well appointed.  We made some good decisions too - paying extra for a 2 berth cabin and 4 seats in the reserved lounge at the very front of the boat so when we weren't having a nap in the cabin (or putting the kids to bed for a while before we docked at midnight) we were enjoying our front row comfy seats! 

So hard to choose which pictures, but these should give you an idea:

Everywhere you look is dense, dense forest, most of it growing right to the shore. We did see some whales too, but not very clearly as they don't like the noise the ferry makes.  


There are cruise ships which go up and down that stretch of coast (and up to Alaska) but I highly recommend the BC Ferries trip as a cheaper and shorter option.


The next day we were up early (again) and on the train which used to be called the Skeena, but is now just the Price Rupert to Jasper train.  We would have loved to have spent some time around Prince Rupert, or the islands nearby, but in our haphazard travel planning we don't appear to have considered this as an option.  Oh well, another time...


The train was lots of fun, and like the ferry, with not too many people on board.  It's not much publicised or promoted to tourists, we're not sure why, but for the whole trip over 2 days our train was constantly delayed to make way for freight trains.  There's lots of industry in the area, despite it's wilderness, and Prince Rupert is now a large container port, as it's cheaper to ship things from China to there and freight it to the US and Canada than make the slightly longer trip to Vancouver, apparently.  Canada's VIA rail is the 3rd most profitable rail freight carrier in the world (or something like that!) which means lots and lots of very long trains chugging past us as we waited in the sidings.  As a result our trip was a little longer than it was meant to be, but that didn't really matter to us.  Actually I did mind the pre-packaged cheese sandwiches for dinner but I'll get over it!


Lots of drawings/games/books were done/played/read, which is good practice for our longer trip next week.

The scenery was again, beautiful, ranging from the forests of the BC coast, through more forests (and many small timber mills) inland (see left photo), ending up in the Rockies (Mt Robson, highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies, on the right). 









I think the word "wilderness" more accurately describes this part of Canada than most other landscapes I've seen.  There is so much of it, seemingly close to impenetrable, although there are small logging towns sprinkled through it more frequently than I would have imagined.  My definition of remote is such an Australian one, where there are very few towns with only a handful of people, and while this is no doubt true of some places, there were also lost of places which would qualify as a "town", complete with mini malls and chain stores, etc.  


After 3 adventurous days it was good to check in to our hotel and Jasper and go to bed knowing that we had the next week free to explore the area under our own steam, but I could get used to travelling the old fashioned way (with wi fi access of course)!